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Monthly Archives: June 2011

Deadlines can be your best friend. Deadlines motivate you to work. Deadlines force you to get shit done. Deadlines force you become more primal. More automatic. More spontaneous. Deadlines force you to trust your instincts. Deadlines force you to embrace happy accidents. Deadlines force you to create with urgency.

Deadlines force you to make quick decisions. Thinking can be harmful. Thinking can be your worst enemy. Thinking kills creativity. Thinking can lead to inaction. To procrastination. To doubt and despair. Thinking can kill your happiness. Kill your passion. Kill your art. Thinking is dangerous. An Artist should never think.

Deadlines give you a goal. A destination. A reference point. A moment to stop and reflect on your journey.

Without deadlines your creativity will fizzle and fade. Without deadlines you become distracted by television and facebook. Without deadlines you stop making art. You find more important things to do. Without deadlines you have more time to think. Without deadlines you begin to doubt yourself. You question your purpose. You question your worth. Without deadlines you lose your drive to create. You lose your spark.

I convinced myself that I could create art without deadlines. I convinced myself that I would make better art without the pressures of a deadline. But without deadlines I got sucked into the void. I got lost in the haze. I lost my spark. I stopped painting. I lost my motivation. I lost my focus.

The thought of scheduling a solo exhibition or a series of solo exhibitions has crept inside my mind.

I’ve been haunted by these images of giant floating heads. I imagine a series of 10 large paintings and 10 smaller paintings. I think 20 paintings would be a solid body of work. A solid exhibition. I imagine the show would take 1 or 2 years to complete. The portraits would be extremely detailed and layered. I think the show would be called Megalomaniac: Attack Of The Giant Floating God Heads. I have also considered doing 10 digital paintings that would be exhibited with the traditional paintings. That would give me 30 pieces. It would be a big ambitious show. I honestly can’t see myself doing another solo exhibit unless it is big and ambitious and life threatening. I have to return with a bang.

I have been working on a new batch of abstract paintings that are turning out well. I don’t hate them yet. At some point I will have enough paintings to have an exhibition of some sort but I haven’t worked out any of the details yet. It depends on how many paintings I end up with.

I am also working on a new series of digital paintings for a self published art book that I hope to release early next year. The book is my main priority. I’ve done dozens of shows but I’ve never published a book of my work.

An idea oozed inside my brain and I drew a doodle of the mess inside my mind. I started drawing crude little sketches whenever the lightning strikes to document my ideas. I also write down words or phrases or verbal descriptions of what I plan on painting. The sketch is just a snapshot of the idea.

I am working on a new series of digital painting that will be collected into a self-published art book. After exploring the digital archive I have decided to revisit old territory and remix some of my old work. 90% of the work isn’t going to make the cut. The quality isn’t there. So I’m going to revisit some of those failures and see if I can turn them into successful pieces, or incorporate those images and ideas into new work. I’m also dusting off my old sketchbooks, including my Ockham’s Razor sketchbook, and pulling ideas from that material. I hope to create between 25-30 new digital paintings and pull the best 20 pieces from the archive for the book. I think the book should have at least 50 digital paintings. This is a project I’ve been wanting to do and I’ve allowed other projects and circumstances to get in the way. This book will be my creative focus for the immediate future. When I’m not working on graphic design or illustration projects for my clients I will be working on this book.

Tonight I started working on a new digital painting based on a painting I did for the Ockham’s Razor exhibit in 2003 titled “YOUR VOTE COUNTS.” Below is a sketch with my ideas for the new digital painting and the beginnings of the new and improved “YOUR VOTE COUNTS.”

Whenever I attempt to draw something cute and cuddly the end result is usually very creepy and disturbing. Below is a recent attempt to draw a cute and cuddly kitten. I think I might have broken the creepy curse. You be the judge.

I dug up an old unfinished digital painting and decided it was a suitable test subject for some experimentation. I wanted to place a strong emphasis on drawing and stray away from the more painterly style that I normally use. I wanted line to be the dominant element.